Someslal Mukhopadhyay.

Not much authentic data have been found about
whether Ranjan loves cats or doesn’t. However, upon grilling him a bit about
this, only this much could be known that Ranjan never wanted to agree that a
cat crossing a street forebodes ill. Actually, once while travelling to some
place in a taxi, he rebuked his driver a good deal when he stopped the car
after seeing a cat “cut” ( i.e. cross) the street. “Hey what kind of a chap are
you, man? Leaving all these great mandarins in the entire country, you think
that only a poor cat is going to harm you?”

And yet even now, at times, in the middle of the
night when all is dead quiet, if he happens to hear any cat crying, it is immediately
followed by a shudder in Ranjan’s chest. And even after much brainstorming
Ranjan hasn’t been able to understand why. Is it because of pity for some unfed
or unwell cat, or out of an anxiety about some hidden mishap?

Ranjan and the Hand

Once in the dead of the night, coming back from
the crematorium after the funeral rites of a relative, Ranjan chanced to
witness a strange, and almost spectral, phenomenon. It was almost 1 am. The
streets were empty. In front of Ranjan’s taxi were moving two vehicles side by
side, one middle-sized Matador van and one Gypsy belonging to the Police.
Suddenly, from the front window on the left of the Gypsy came out a left hand.
At once out came from the front window on the right of the Matador van a right
hand. For a few seconds the two hands from the two moving cars met and engaged
in some kind of a communication on God knows what. Thereafter the two hands
just returned to their respective places. And the Matador too zoomed away.

And on the lips of Ranjan, still staring in a
nonplussed manner, there suddenly came, paraphrasing a famous line from a
famous song, the stanza – “These hands are yours and mine”.

Ranjan and the
unrepentant Marxist

One of Ranjan’s senior
colleagues always described himself as “an unrepentant Marxist”. Once Ranjan
got an invitation from this colleague to a seminar held at a renowned hotel in
Calcutta.

The discussion in the
seminar centred around globalization, mass-poverty and the like. However, while
the discussion was on, the lecture of an old professor was abruptly stopped in
the middle and the lunch-break was announced. And then and there a long line
was seen formed near the buffet. A professor known to be a believer in
revolutionary ideology was seen to fill up his plate a number of times with a
special ice-cream, without even glancing at the other offerings at the buffet.

After the lunch, Ranjan noticed that many of the
delegates were being presented with a sleek leather bag. When he inquired from
his colleague about whether he could obtain one such bag, he was coldly
informed that those bags were not meant for the guests of the delegates, and besides,
it would not be becoming of them to say anything about this to the organizers.

A long while after this Ranjan noticed from his
own place that the colleague, taking his son (who incidentally came just at the
lunch-break) made his way towards some organizers and was saying something
smilingly to them. A little while after this one of the organizers was seen
bringing two bags and handing them over to his colleague.